


Lost

by Viscariafields



Series: Leandra Hawke [32]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Dementia, F/M, Heavy Angst, Lyrium, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viscariafields/pseuds/Viscariafields
Summary: Prolonged exposure to lyrium causes templars to slowly lose their memories. It never occurred to Hawke that Fenris might meet the same fate.
Relationships: Fenris/Female Hawke
Series: Leandra Hawke [32]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1462840
Comments: 27
Kudos: 66





	Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Heed the tags-- there is no happy ending here.

Things changed when Varric came to visit. Perhaps things had been changing already, but Fenris hadn’t noticed. He ate breakfast with Hawke. He did his mid-morning exercises. He answered letters that needed answering, advised when advising was requested. Watched his sons spar with the Fereldan boys, drank his tea in the garden. Chatted with Bethany when he could find her, which seemed to happen less often these days. It was a good life, made better for the visit of an old companion.

He was happy to sit and listen to his wife reminisce with her closest friend, each tale taller than the last. Varric painted a pretty picture of their youth, ridiculous heroics and snappy jokes and always escaping in the nick of time. One tale towered over the others, however, with fire and smoke and spears, and Fenris couldn’t let it pass.

“You mean to tell me that you and Hawke singlehandedly took on the entire Qunari horde in Lowtown? I think I would recall that.”

Varric glanced at Hawke before responding, “You were there, elf. You—”

Hawke cut him off with a quick shake of her head. “Right,” Fenris replied sharply, nodding along. Of course he was there. He’d followed Hawke everywhere. And they had fought many Qunari in Kirkwall and after. Just another battle of many, he supposed, made more desperate and heroic for the sake of storytelling. There was a pang of familiarity about the whole thing, now that he thought about it. He found himself unable to focus on the rest of Varric’s stories, frowning to himself until Hawke called it a night.

She was quiet that evening as they got ready for bed, concerned and hiding it badly. “Are the children in bed?” he asked, wondering if they were the cause of her worry.

“The children?” She blinked at him, puzzled. “I suspect Andy is probably reading. I’m not pointing fingers, but one of us raised a bookworm, and I can’t imagine anyone dares to tell her to go to bed anymore. Can’t even take her candles away because she’ll just light the room up with magelights. She’s as bad as you.”

“Right,” he said, rubbing his face. Hardly children anymore. He supposed they slept when and where they wanted.

The atmosphere changed after that first evening. Fenris offered to play cards, but Hawke declined every time. “I’m too old to gamble,” she said, but it was a lie and a poor one at that. He was happy enough to listen to Varric talk of Kirkwall and once again fabricate memories of their youth. He often found his mind wandering, though, rarely following a story to completion. It was like how he sometimes found himself in a room with no reason for being there and no knowledge of how he arrived. So he straightened a painting on the wall, cleared a table of clutter that appeared as if by magic. He found himself in the middle of one of Varric’s tales, the joke half-told, and smiled because he knew it was expected.

Without him present, they talked in hushed tones. He caught them at it, eavesdropping here and there. His anger flared once, a wild thought of their infidelity grasping him by the spine and enraging him before it flickered out just as quickly. They did not have the faces of guilty lovers, ashamed of being caught. And even if they were, he wasn’t certain rage was what he would feel. He looked on them through a door opened a crack, and there was only sadness there. Perhaps Varric brought news of Bethany.

“I never thought I’d ever have to think about that dead bastard again and what he did to him. I never thought he could possibly take anything else, anything more.”

“From what Cullen's told me about it, the bad ones go before the good ones. So at least _he_ won’t have to think about him ever again.”

Hawke sniffed. “Trust you to find a silver lining. As far as they go, that’s a good one.” Silence for a time. More sniffling. Fenris almost entered, trying to make sense of what they were saying, but Hawke was talking again. “My father was around his age, I guess, when he got sick. At least, I was around Andy’s age. And mother…”

“Does that make it easier?”

“Everything ends, Varric.”

He scoffed. “Not like this. Bianca did research, and Cullen—”

“I know. Andy has been looking into it.”

At the mention of his daughter, he entered the room. Varric held Hawke’s hands in his, a bump of his knuckle to her chin to force a smile.

“I can stay longer if you want,” he offered.

“No. I’ll… I’ll write if I need you.” The smile was short lived, and her head dropped into her hand. “Maker, I wish Bethany were still here.”

The Deep Roads, Fenris thought. Bethany had gone to the Deep Roads. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten. How many days had he wandered around the palace looking for her? Someone should have reminded him.

“Why don’t you both come back with me? Stay in Kirkwall for a while.”

Fenris had no strong feelings on this, one place seemed as good as another. But Hawke shook her head. “No. Markus can’t leave Denerim, and I…” She looked at Fenris, brows knitted, and he moved to comfort her, a hand on her shoulder. She covered it with her own, but he seemed to have brought her no relief. “We should spend as much time together as a family as we can.”

Varric nodded. “I understand.”

He pulled Fenris in for a hug, too tight, if Fenris had anything to say about it. “No need for dramatics, old friend,” he protested, freeing himself, “I’m sure our paths will cross again soon enough.”

“Yeah.” Varric pulled away, wiping an eye. Age had apparently brought on sentimentality in the man, for another tear slipped out. Varric calmed himself, before standing his whole height and saying, “Fenris, you are one of my oldest and truest friends. I love you. I hope you—” he cut himself off with a shake of the head and a bitter laugh “—Just know right now that I love you.”

Fenris didn’t know what to say to that. Before he could muster a proper response, Varric had left.

He considered the departure, Hawke’s mood, their hushed conversations. Perhaps Varric was sick, though he couldn’t think of why Hawke wouldn’t tell him. Someone else then, Alistair or Sebastian. When he asked her, she said no. Things settled back into their routine, calm and quiet, morning exercises and tea and reading in bed and Hawke seemed less sad. Perhaps he’d been wrong about the whole thing. Everything was fine.

“Are the children in bed?” he asked out of habit, pulling off his shirt. Hawke winced, already under the covers, and he wondered which child he'd have to wrangle tonight. 

“You know Markus stays in the royal wing now. I daresay they keep him too busy to go to bed so early as his aging parents.”

Fenris nodded. He did know that. “Bethany must be happy to have him so close.”

Hawke didn’t respond. He joined her, but she made no move to blow out the candles.

“Fenris,” Hawke asked quietly, “Do you remember how we first met?”

“Of course.” An automatic reply. Of course he knew how they met. Meeting her was the most important thing that ever happened to him. He could not forget something like that. But as she waited for him to elaborate, he found the details escaped him. They were in Kirkwall, this he knew. She had impressed him with… the Saarebas. No, that was later. Was it saving the mage from slavers? He tried to remember which one, but there had been so many. He opened his mouth to speak, but there was nothing, nothing to say.

“It’s alright,” she assured him, pulling him close, her chest warm and familiar, her heartbeat strong against his ear, “It’s fine. Don’t worry.”

He wasn’t worried. He knew how they met, he did. It was days later when he told her, triumphantly, of how he tricked her in Lowtown, how she pulled her daggers on him in Hightown. Of course he would never forget something so important. Her smile was thin as she listened, but she kissed his knuckles and thanked him, told him she loved him.

~

“Andy’s coming home to visit.”

He looked up from his book. “Who?” This was the wrong response. He felt it in his bones the moment the word came out, but it was too late. Hawke smiled, fake, _fake_ , and he was failing her. He wasn’t sure how, but he was failing her.

Her voice was controlled and level when she said, “Andy. Our daughter. She’s coming to stay with us for a time.”

“She’s been in Antiva,” he said, desperate to prove to her, to himself, that he had a hold on the world. Desperate to see her look at him the way she used to, without pity, without fear.

“Yes. Doing research at the Circle there. She’s coming home,” Hawke repeated again.

He was still surprised when he noticed the younger Leandra watching him do his morning exercises, coat still on and dusty from the road. He tilted his head in invitation, and with a huff she shrugged off her outer layers to join him.

“You have not been practicing,” he chastised, eyeing her form.

“I’ve had other things on my mind.”

“Research.”

She only hummed, grimacing as she attempted the stretches.

“Spar with me.”

“Father, no. This is not why I’m here.”

“You’re here to visit me. This is how I want to spend the morning.”

They sparred. Even without regular practice, Andy remembered the footwork. As she should. Hadn’t he been the one to teach her all those years ago? Even before her magic manifested, he had readied her to face an unkind world. And she might now spend her days reading in dusty towers, but she was young, and he had trained her well, and perhaps climbing ten flights of stairs multiple times each day kept her in shape because she was fast. Or maybe she just got it from her mother.

She hit him with a jab he should have dodged easily, but he didn’t. Letting his mind wander too much, and his eyes were no longer tracking her hands. The hit lacked force, but it stung the lyrium scarring his skin, and the pain reverberated out, a sharp burning lancing his body. He fell to a knee, breath knocked out of him, to Andy’s call of “ _Father!_ ”

“It is fine,” he assured her through gritted teeth. And it was. Already the pain receded, the flash of white behind his eyes dissipating until the world came into focus. He blinked at his closed fists and took long, slow breaths. When he looked up, his daughter was peering at him, large hazel eyes in her mother’s face and he was overwhelmed with delight at seeing her here. “Andy,” he sighed, “When did you get here?”

She swallowed, her face turning brittle. “Just this morning, father. Come on. I want some tea.”

He was happy to follow her. It was good to have the children home. Markus and Ricky came by for supper, a rare occurrence to have them both, and Fenris breathed a sigh of relief, of contentment. “We should have invited Bethany,” he told Markus. Then the table would have been full.

After supper, he found himself alone the hall. He followed the sound of voices to terrace, dark now in the late evening, but something stayed his hand on the door. He listened.

“It’s the lyrium,” Andy said, “Just like a templar. It’s… it’s taking his mind.”

They were talking about him, he realized slowly as Andy explained the progression of how lyrium poisoned a mind. Slow and inexorable and peaceful if he was lucky. 

“Can’t we do anything to stop it?” That was Ricky. No, he went by Rick now. Or Varric. Too old for the diminutive. Had been for years.

“Short of skinning him?” A thump and the table rattled, a splash as a cup turned over, dumping its contents. Andy was always bad at controlling her temper, wine on her shoes now to pay for the outburst. “Even if we could, and we can’t, it would be too late. He won’t get back what he’s lost.” Her voice broke, and Fenris almost pushed the door open, before remembering he was the cause of her outburst.

Had it really gotten so bad?

“The templars have been studying ways to get off the lyrium, to get better.” Markus this time, he was certain.

“They didn’t have it branded into their skin.”

They thought he was lost, and maybe he was. They would probably know better than him. His hand still on the door, ready to push, and their voices raised in bickering anger.

“Fenris.” Hawke was behind him, her eyes red. Her gaze drifted to the door and back to him. “Come on, love,” she said, holding out a hand, “Let them talk.”

She led him back to their bedroom, already dressed for bed. “I’m sorry,” he said to her back. He was losing his history, _their_ history. His memories again, slowly this time, gone before he even knew it. His life, so painstakingly built, now dismantled. It wasn’t pity in her eyes but grief. He was losing her, piece by piece, moment by moment, and she was losing him right back. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” she replied, already facing him, “No. It’s not your fault.” A hand on his cheek, brushing away a tear. He held on, held on to her, the anchor of his life, the most important thing that ever happened to him. “I just wish we had more time,” she murmured, “That’s what everyone wants, isn’t it? More time. I’ve always been greedy like that.”

He pulled her to his chest. She held on tight, as if she could stop him from slipping away, as if her arms could protect him from the ravages of time. And he wished she could, because if anyone could tell time to fuck right off and return what was rightfully hers, it was Hawke. “If only I hadn’t wasted so much of it in the beginning.”

“We loved each other then, too. Stupidly and painfully, maybe. I can’t regret how it happened.”

She helped him undress. Unnecessary—he wasn’t an invalid in body at least—but perhaps they both wanted to keep touching each other, keep holding on. Her hand on his shoulder, his neck, his cheek. His on her waist, her back, her hips. Hawke was more than a series of events in his life, she was muscle memory and instinct. Wipe away every conscious thought he had, and he would find her anyway, already knowing exactly how they fit together even if he could never again tell anyone why. He wanted her to know this, that she was an indelible part of his soul, but she dropped her forehead against his and he felt she already knew.

There was little to say.

“I don’t want to forget.”

“I don’t want you to forget.”

“I love you and I always will.”

“And I you.”

Eventually, they had to part. No embrace lasted forever, and this would not be their last. Fenris finished readying himself for sleep. Hawke blew out the candle as soon as he joined her, resting his head on her shoulder.

“The children—they’re in bed?” he asked when they had settled.

Hawke pressed him closer to her, held him tight to her chest. Running her fingers through his hair, she told him, “Yes, love. They’re all in bed. Andy and the boys. Everyone is home and in bed.”

“Good,” he replied. It was good to have them home. There was nothing to worry about when everyone was together. Everything was going to be fine.


End file.
